Rio and Gakpo
PLUS:
- Wirtz
- Ekitike
- Isaak
They were well covered for the role. Its just that it didn’t work our b/c of the combination of poor form and injuries…
I dont consider moving those players out of position as reasonably cover the role. Maybe Wirtz but moving him to the wing isn´t really a great option.
LFC demands more than a striker on the wing.
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That assumes that you knew Salah would drop off and not complete his remaining two years.
And if you sign him and then what? Keep him on the bench?
How does he then develop?
Regarding the LB position:
- We have Kerkez approaching his prime years
- ThenTsimikas as an experienced back up with 1-2yrs on his contract
Why would you then sign a young player..Isn’t that what the academy is for?
Well, the technical people do.
Naglesman is using Wirtz on the left to very good effect.
Isaak did at Newcastle. As did Ekitike at Frankfurt
I wouldnt say to great effect.
They werent very good at all against Ivory Coast and international football is not the Premier League.
Not really. Both strikers on the wing and primarily played as strikers. We´re also not Newcastle and Frankfurt. We are Liverpool with high standards.
International or PL, its still football. And in the Bundesliga, Alonso did play him from the left in games..
Playing from wide does not stop a good striker from arriving in the box at the appropriate time. Need to remind you that Isaak was the best striker in the PL, while playing centrally and from the left for NC.
The people who run LFC are not mugs, like we sometimes seem to imply…
Sunday league is still football. Primarily he played as a type of 10. Even when he plays on the left he´s almost never there.
Isak played from the centre. Playing from the left doesnt stop a striker doing striker things if they want to, but it does mean you have much less threat actually on the left. Not worth it
That’s why its called cover for the left side.
True it did not work out. But you can only assess the decision bylooking at it from their perspective, not from hindsight…
a new mangers with new positive ideas can be just as refreshing for a player as a long rest can be
But we´re not talking about only backup in the cup against Darlington.
We´re talking about having players ready to start there in big games and in the Champions League. And we´re miles away from having that unfortunately, due to bad planning.
We have to buy very good wide players this summer. Not sure if we already have but lets see.
Not sure which one of those players is not capable of, and has not already started CL games.
Bad planning is one thing.
Having well laid plans not work as a result of poor form and injuries is a seperate matter.
That is not bad planning.
Let’s hope he can get him fit.
I struggle to understand the hand wringing around Macca.
Yes he had a poor season. By his OWN standard. As did several LFC players.
As did Phil Foden. I don’t see City fans talking about selling him..
As you can see from watching Argentina, this is one of the best CMs in the world…
We had a poor season. Its over. We start afresh in August…
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No like everybody else I’ve expected Salah to give us 5 more years on the highest level while staying injury free.
We rode our luck long enough with him. Took him long enough to extend his contract so it was clear he’s leaving in 2027. So when do you start planning for life after him? January 2027? Lazy! -
so you say an 18 year old is not able develop if he trains with our first team for two years and gets some minutes here and there + games in the domestic cups?
How do you know Diomande will be ready for PL football immediately? Still a step from Bundesliga to PL - especially if you never played in CL/EL. Might need a year or two. But hey let’s spend €120m on him.
- regarding leftback. Tsimikas is 30 and lost a year away on loan. He has one year left on his contract. We won’t offer him higher wages and so it’s very likely to leave on a free.
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Planning for replacing Salah has been ongoing for a while as reported by several people. It was only going to accelerate this summer.
Training with the first team is not enough to develop players in that manner. We saw that with Quansah, and without going to Leverkusen, he would never have made the WC squad. There are many more such examples.
We have two years, this and the next to deal with the backup LB issue. Including assessing if an academy player will step up…
To add to the above point. We tried to move Tsimikas on last season and failed to get any bids we felt were good enough, so we loaned him out instead. If he does end up being our back up LB for this season I agree we are likely going to then let him go on a free when his contract runs out at the end of the season.
Ideally we would have someone step up from the Academy to be the new back up if that happens.
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Which is actually smart planning. We had 2 LBs neither of which was the long term answer so we went out and bought the best young LB in the league. We wanted Robbo to back him up but knew he would be moving on after his final year so keeping Tsimi on the books allowed us to bring him back for a year once Robbo left. That gives us 2 years of an experienced player supporting a top young player which then gives us time to properly evaluate whether he is going to cut it at this level or if we need to go back into the market in summer 27 to find a long term option for the position.
There is loads of room to disagree with specific decisions made by the people running things. But positioning where we are with the squad as because things like laziness or not being aware of the need to plan is insane talk. Just like with Diaz. We didnt decide not to replace him, or simply not bother. We made a conscious decision to change the profile of our attackers to support the evolution of the side we collectively chose to make under the last manager - 3 went out and 3 came in. It didnt work out and Slot has now lost his job. Criticize that if you want, but not because the people responsible for putting the squad together were asleep when it came to “replacing” diaz.
EDIT note this is more a general response to the direction of the conversation than related to anything you specifically said.
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We’ve been through this a lot. Whenever we pay top dollar for a player there is always hand-wringing that we should have got them earlier for less money.
There is a selection bias that totally ignores all the prospects that didn’t make it. The temptation is to look at how well Diomande has done and think ‘we should have got him earlier’ but there were a lot of players we could have got, who are the same age of Diomande, were similarly rated and didn’t make it. It’s looking at the grand national, waiting to see who wins it, and then criticising anyone who didn’t back them.
Diomande is Diomande because he had a season at Leipsig as first choice, playing almost every minute, and gaining bags of experience. He does not become the player clubs are willing to pay 80-100m for if he came to Liverpool a year ago to play reserve behind Mo Salah. It’s a similar argument to the one I often have about Quansah. Liverpool is a football team that wants to be at the elite of the game, in the mix for the biggest trophies. There is no margin for error, and we simply do not have the space to carry too many young prospects, giving them all the time they need to develop.
Finally the club are lazy for not getting these players when they are available young prospects? What do you think Rio Ngumoha is? Or Trey Nyoni? Or a class below them Josh Abe or Luca Eden. These are some of the most exciting prospects in football, but we can’t often a pathway to too many of these kids, and Liverpool have shown that they will often leave a kid at a lesser club, leave them to develop and then spend big money to bring them in when they have finished cooking.
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And with Diomande, he simply isnt one you can point to and say we should have got him earlier and cheaper. It’s really difficult to get your head around the trajectory he has been on - 2 years ago he was playing amateur football in the US at a level that is so low it doesn’t even register on the official US league system hierarchy. It would be considered the 5th or 6th tier here at best. I cannot think of precedent for this absurd an emergence.
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